The doctors have all told me I’m the last person on Earth who has to die, that is to say, the last human being who will ever die of old age or the euphemistic “natural causes”. People can still die by suicide or murder or, as they used to say, by misadventure. The occasional shuttle to the moon or Mars will still blow up because some trillionaire wanted to cut a corner, the abuses of the idle rich aren’t so easily wiped out by science, nothing to do there, but I am the last person who won’t go on forever, with proper maintenance. The only one left whose genetic markings are incompatible with the immortality treatment. They’ve already purged the sperm-banks and ovum-depositories and zygotic-freezers of anyone else flawed as I am. I’m already a celebrity.
I’m just over seventy and even with my failings, modern medicine has me looking like folk in their middle forties looked when I was a child, my hairs still salt-and-pepper. But even as it is, I’m the only person who will ever look this old again, even the poorest of the poor are locked down in their middle thirties and rich folk manage to top off in their middle twenties. Perhaps some point will be reached where everyone is nineteen forever except for the people nearly as flawed as I am, who may end up looking almost-middle-aged forever. Perhaps once I’m gone, they’ll be the celebrity freaks of curiosity touring in carnivals. Maybe I’ll die in a human zoo.
But even myself, not for a long time. They say I will be one-hundred-and-ten before I look or feel as the elderly once did, my new-found infamy will get me the best medical care possible, figuring in my deficit. They’ll hold getting me to a decrepit one-hundred-and-forty or maybe one-fifty as the last great miracle of science before there are no miracles left to conjure forth.
When I die, the last man ever doomed to die no matter what, who will succumb to something other than accidents or wars or simple boredom, I imagine it will be one whopper of a funeral. They will say an age died with me and this is the new world they all get to begin together. Or something else pompous or ridiculous. That’s another thing they can’t cure. Pompous speech.
So many people that I meet treat me with the most astonishing pity. As if I am the last one who has to leave an amazing party they get to hold forever. I play along to make them smile, though really I’m not so very sure. Won’t be for a long while yet but the time will come when I am not worrying about paying my rent or my student loans or astrotraveler creditory lines off anymore. Someday, I’ll be allowed to stop worrying about what others want of me and rest? Simply rest?
Perhaps it’s the beginning of endless hell and I’m the last free man as well.
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